In the light of previous acoustic analyses of Danish stød and Danish intonation, we discuss two different phonological theories. In one, stød is an autonomous laryngeal syllable prosody. In the other, stød is the phonetic manifestation of a HL tonal pattern compressed within one syllable. The tonal representation is found to be contradicted by the phonetic reality, and it cannot account for the structurally determined alternation between non-stød and stød in inflection and derivation, nor for latent stød or stød in compounds. Furthermore, stød patterns are largely constant across regional varieties of Danish, but tonal patterns over the relevant structural domains are highly variable. Thus, stød may occur on any kind of tonal configuration, anywhere in the speakers’ pitch range, a variability which is hard to reconcile with a fixed HL representation.